An Automated Progress Tracking System for Industrial Facility Construction Projects

As amount of information in construction industry is growing, the role of information system in project management is becoming increasingly important. With the emerging IT application to the advancing construction industry, construction project management system with advanced technology has been progressed vigorously to improve construction productivity and management efficiency. Recently, a web-based Project Management Information System (PMIS) is developed to support decision-making process by efficiently managing project related information generated from various discipline. Many firms are in the process of developing the PMIS system or already have been applied the system to various projects. However, PMIS is still in its early stage of development to be applied at industrial plant construction projects. With the complexity of the industrial plant projects, the industry practitioners need to be able to visualize the construction schedule information to manage the project efficiently. This study suggests methodologies for improving PMIS specialized for industrial plant piping construction projects to estimate the baseline schedule and performance measurement more accurately by developing a framework for the piping construction projects. By using this developed system, the researchers expect that piping construction projects will be more efficiently managed on a real-time basis through measuring progress of piping at each and every state of progress milestone and provide management with opportunities to forecast the level of efforts required to execute the remaining work scope in a timely manner.